Category: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf. The links are to Goodreads.

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler – Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend tells him she’s facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son.

These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah’s meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.

Past Lying by Val McDermid – It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have. 

The Complete Works of George Orwell: Novels, Poetry, Essays: (1984, Animal Farm, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, A Clergyman’s Daughter, Burmese Days, Down … Over 50 Essays and Over 10 Poems),

A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel – In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.

The Snow Angel by Anki Edvinsson  (Detectives von Klint and Berg Book 1) – A teenage suicide. A murdered pharmacist. A missing girl. Is the obvious connection the right one?

Relocating from Stockholm with her teenage daughter, Detective Charlotte von Klint expected Umeå to be a quiet backwater, a snow-covered change of pace from fighting the criminal underworld of the capital. But when a pharmacist is found brutally murdered in her apartment, and a young girl and her dealer boyfriend vanish without a trace after a party, suddenly Umeå doesn’t seem so benign. And the boy on the bridge doesn’t feel like an isolated incident.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods – On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks – When a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman’s child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it.
Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention. The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.

Blue Murder by Cath Staincliffe – Meet Janine Lewis. A single mum of three and Manchester’s newest detective chief inspector. Her cheating husband walked out the day she got promoted. Now she’s six months pregnant with his baby and in charge of her first murder case.

The body of a deputy head teacher is found on a lonely allotment. Gutted — his stomach sliced open — and left for dead, The only witnesses are a dying elderly man and a seven-year-old girl. And now the prime suspect has disappeared . . .

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know? by Dov Waxman – No conflict in the world has lasted as long, generated as many news headlines, or incited as much controversy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, despite, or perhaps because of, the degree of international attention it receives, the conflict is still widely misunderstood. While Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters trade accusations, many outside observers remain confused by the conflict’s complexity and perplexed by the passion it arouses.The Israeli-Palestinian What Everyone Needs to Know? offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world’s most intractable dispute. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free Q&A format, Dov Waxman provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides. Readers will learn what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about, how it has evolved over time, and why it continues to defy diplomatic efforts at a resolution.

All Creatures Great and Small: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet by James Herriot – The first volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series.

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world’s most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For fifty years, generations of readers have flocked to Herriot’s marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is a Books On My Winter 2023-2024 To-Read List. I hardly ever stick to any of the To-Be-Read lists I compile, mainly because I’m a mood reader. The books listed here are books that at the moment I fancy reading soon, but when the time comes I might find myself reading other books – we’ll see.

Nero by Conn Iggulden – historical fiction about the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68. It’s the first in a new trilogy covering Nero’s early childhood.To be published in May 2024.

 Munich Wolf by Rory Clements – historical fiction set in Munich in the 1930’s, featuring murder squad detective Sebastian Wolff. I’ve enjoyed Clements’ Tom Wilde spy thrillers, so I’m hoping this new series will be just as good. To be published in January 2024.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene – A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Greene’s gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the ‘dangerous edge of things’.

And Finally: Matters of Life and Death by Henry Marsh – as a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but even he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. He navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient. As the days pass, his mind turns to his career, to the people and places he has known, and to creative projects still to be completed. Yet he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and nature, by his love for his family, and – most of all – by what it is to be alive.

The Far Pavilions by M M Kaye – the story of an English man – Ashton Pelham-Martyn – brought up as a Hindu. It is the story of his passionate, but dangerous love for Juli, an Indian princess. It is the story of divided loyalties, of friendship that endures till death, of high adventure and of the clash between East and West.

The Rocks Below by Nigel P Bird, a novella telling the story of the aftermath of a massive storm off the East coast of Scotland. As people are clearing up the devastation, strange things happen. People and animals go missing. Amongst the debris strewn across the beaches, there are some huge boulders, which a local geology lecturer decides to analyse.

Death by a Honeybee by Abigail Keam – Josiah Louise Reynolds, a former art history professor, was once a celebrity with wealth, social position, and a famous husband. Now her circumstances have drastically altered. She is now a full time beekeeper who finds her world turned upside down when a man is found dead in her bee yard, only to discover the victim is her competitor and nemesis. 

The Innocent by Matthew Hall – a prequel to the Jenny Cooper ‘Coroner series (I enjoyed reading two of these). When Coroner Jenny Cooper crashes her car one bright September morning, she finds her mind propelled back to the past – to ten years earlier when she was embroiled in the most difficult of cases when a fourteen year old girl in her care is killed, falling under a train. It seems both the girl’s family and the authorities are determined to prove Jenny responsible. But what is the real truth behind Natasha’s tragic death?

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer – a remarkable true story of a boy’s life in Malawi, about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual’s ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.

3500: An Autistic Boy’s Ten-Year Romance with Snow White by Ron Miles –

Benjamin, a nine-year-old autistic boy with a love of Disney, was taking his first trip to Walt Disney World. The last thing his parents expected was to see him come alive. What followed was a remarkable tale of inspiration, heartbreak, dedication and joy as Benjamin’s family relocated from Seattle to Orlando in order to capture that magic and put it to practical use.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is  Books with Weather Events in the Title/on the Cover. A list of titles with weather-related words in them like storm, rain, blizzard, flood, lightning, hail, snow, wind, etc. OR covers with lightning/storms in the picture.

I’ve chosen books with weather events in the titles and on the covers. All but one are books I’ve read and enjoyed.The links go to my posts on the books.

Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves, the fourth in her Shetland Island Quartet, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez. It’s set on Fair Isle, his home island. With the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Perez investigates a murder at the Bird Observatory.

The Body in the Ice by A J Mackenzie, the 2nd Hardcastle and Chaytor Mystery set in Romney Marsh and the surrounding countryside in 1796-7 when the winter was exceptionally harsh and cold and on Christmas Day a body is found, frozen in a pond. There’s no modern technology, just old-fashioned crime detection and deduction and a certain amount of intuition.

By Sword and Storm by Margaret Skea, the third book in the Munro Saga. It’s historical fiction set in 1598 when Adam Munro and his family were living in France as the French Wars of Religion drew to an end. Adam is a colonel  in the Scots Gardes, an elite Scottish regiment whose duties included the provision of a personal bodyguard to the French King, Henri IV.

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble, a novel exploring the ending of life, and the nature of ageing, centring around Fran Stubbs, and set against a backdrop of rising floods in Britain and in the Canaries. It looks at the effects of the influx of immigrants arriving by boat to the Canaries from Africa and of the effect of the tremor off the small Canary Island of El Hierro on the tides.

A Deadly Thaw by Sarah Ward, the second in the Francis Sadler series set in the fictional town of Bampton in Derbyshire. In 2004 Lena Fisher was arrested for suffocating her husband, Andrew. In 2016, a year after Lena’s release from prison, Andrew was found dead in a disused mortuary.

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell. A novel set in July 1976 when London is in the grip of a heatwave. (It was not just London, because I remember it very well where I was living in Cheshire in the north-west.) Gretta’s husband pops out of the house to buy a newspaper – but he doesn’t come back – this is a story of a family in crisis.

The Mist by Ragnar Jonasson, Nordic Noir. Jonasson’s writing brings the scenery and the weather to life – you can feel the isolation and experience what it is like to be lost in a howling snowstorm. The emotional tension is brilliantly done too, the sense of despair, confusion and dread is almost unbearable. 

Rain by Melissa Harrison, a ‘meditation on the English landscape in wet weather.’ She describes four walks in the rain over four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.

The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves, the 10th Vera Stanhope mystery novel. It’s set on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a tidal island just off the coast of Northumberland, only accessible across a causeway when the tide is out. Vera and her team investigate the death of Rick Kelsall who was discovered hanged from the rafters of his small bedroom on the island. 

Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson, more Nordic Noir, set in the tiny town of Siglufjördur in Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason, a rookie policeman, investigates the deaths of a young woman found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer who fell to his death in the local theatre. This is one of my TBRs.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is The topic this week is Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List

I don’t plan what I’m going to read next, unless I have a review copy to read, so I don’t have a To-Read list. I do have many books waiting to be read – here are 10 of them, all e-books, that I may read this autumn. I’d forgotten I’d got some of these books, so it’s been good to sort through what I have in the black hole that is my Kindle.

I like to think I’ll read at least some of these, but when the time comes I could read other books instead.

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. I saw on Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings blog that she has started to read this book and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read it for years. She’s read the first four chapters and it sounds so good.

A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a ‘base coin that couldn’t be invested’. As Dombey’s callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction... (Amazon UK)

Telling Tales  by Ann Cleeves, the 2nd Vera book, crime fiction. I’ve been reading the Vera books out of order and somehow missed this one. I have just started to read it and it’s looking good.

The residents of an East Yorkshire village are revisited with the nightmare of a murder that happened 10 years before. there was some doubt about the guilty verdict passed on Jeanie Long and now it would seem that the killer is still at large. Inspector Vera Stanhope builds up a picture of a community afraid of itself and of outsiders. (Fantastic Fiction)

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson, the 21st DCI Banks book and the next one for me to read. Crime fiction

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot.

The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early ’70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks receives a warning to step away from the case, he realises there is much more to the mystery than meets the eye – for there are plenty more skeletons to come out of the closet . . . (Amazon UK)

Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths, the 5th in the Brighton Mystery series.

Three young women have gone missing.

A girl called Rhonda has vanished from her boarding school. Maybe she ran away, but there are disturbing similarities to the disappearance of two other young women – those too thought not to be suspicious. Detective Edgar Stephens is under pressure to solve Rhonda’s disappearance, but it is his wife Emma, herself a former detective now frustrated at being just a housewife, who concludes there might be a connection between the three cases. Edgar’s friend, magician Max Mephisto, is reinventing himself as a movie star and trying not to envy his daughter Ruby’s television fame. Little do either of them know how close they are to being drawn into the deadly web of abduction and murder about to trap them all. (Amazon UK)

Exposure by Helen Dunmore, historical fiction, a Cold War spy thriller.

London, November, 1960: the Cold War is at its height. Spy fever fills the newspapers, and the political establishment knows how and where to bury its secrets. When a highly sensitive file goes missing, Simon Callington is accused of passing information to the Soviets, and arrested.

His wife, Lily, suspects that his imprisonment is part of a cover-up, and that more powerful men than Simon will do anything to prevent their own downfall. She knows that she too is in danger, and must fight to protect her children. But what she does not realise is that Simon has hidden vital truths about his past, and may be found guilty of another crime that carries with it an even greater penalty. (Goodreads)

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, one of the British Library Crime Classics

Graham and Joan Bendix have apparently succeeded in making that eighth wonder of the modern world, a happy marriage. And into the middle of it there drops, like a clap of thunder, a box of chocolates.Joan Bendix is killed by a poisoned box of liqueur chocolates that cannot have been intended for her to eat. The police investigation rapidly reaches a dead end. Chief Inspector Moresby calls on Roger Sheringham and his Crimes Circle – six amateur but intrepid detectives – to consider the case. The evidence is laid before the Circle and the members take it in turn to offer a solution. Each is more convincing than the last, slowly filling in the pieces of the puzzle, until the dazzling conclusion. This new edition includes an alternative ending by the Golden Age writer Christianna Brand, as well as a brand new solution devised specially for the British Library by the crime novelist and Golden Age expert Martin Edwards. (Amazon UK)

To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey, a Golden Age Mystery.

It was rumoured that Hollywood stars would go to any lengths for the privilege of being photographed by the good-looking, brilliantly talented and ultra-fashionable portrait photographer Leslie Searle. But what was such a gifted creature doing in such an English village backwater as Salcott St Mary? And why — and how — did he disappear? If a crime had been committed, was it murder…fraud…or simply some macabre practical joke? (Goodreads)

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd, non fiction

As the UK’s top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right – and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die? (Goodreads)

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, historical fiction, set in post-WW2 London about memory, family secrets and lies.

It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women all who seem determined to protect Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel journeys through recollection, reality and imagination to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time, to piece together a story that feels something like the truth. (Amazon)

The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Freyja and Huldar Book 2, crime fiction.

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school’s time capsule, ten years after it was buried. But surely, if a thirteen-year-old wrote it, it can’t be a real threat…

Detective Huldar suspects he’s been given the investigation simply to keep him from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

For the discovery of the letter coincides with a string of macabre events: body parts found in a garden, followed by the murder of the man who owned the house. His initials are BT, one of the names on the note. (Goodreads)

Huldar and Freyja must race to identify the writer, the victims and the murderer, before the rest of the targets are killed…